Dear all -- Jim Nohrnberg asked me to forward the following to the list.
KG

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 02:06:10 -0500
From: James C. Nohrnberg <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Ken: Could you forward to SpList? My thanks!!

From: "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]>

Re Gorgonian astonishment:
       There is, we are told, terror in love (Milton, Par.
Lost IX.490), but also in beauty, which is as intimidating
as it is attractive.  Such a terrible beauty is born in
Homeric Hymn to Athena: "From his awful head wise Zeus
himself bare her arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold,
and awe seized all the gods as they gazed. But Athena
sprang quickly from the immortal head and stood before
Zeus who holds the aegis, shaking a sharp spear: great
Olympus began to reel horribly at the might of the goddess
... and the earth round about gave a dread groan." Compare
the birth of Milton's Sin.
      The Medusa-image in Spenser should be related to the
head on the shield of Athena as a chastity-goddess. The
blinded dragon in Busirane's realm is a reaction to an
emblem tradition for the Athena-esque custody of virgins:
see Analogy, 485-86. For the iconology of the guardian
dragon and blinded vigilance, see likewise C.S. Lewis,
"Spenser?s Cruel Cupid," in Studies and Medieval and
Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1966), 164-68. Cf. Milton, Comus, 392-96: "Beauty [...]
had need the guard / Of dragon-watch with unenchanted eye,
/ To save [...] and defend [...] /From [...] bold
Incontinence," with 446-47. "that snaky-headed Gorgon
shield/That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin," as
"the arms of chastity" (439).
      For Minerva's Gorgonian shield opposing the arrows
of Cupid, see Analogy, 456-57, 472-73, 485-86. Cited are:
the emblem of Gilles Corrozet, in Hecatongraphie (Paris,
1543), Sig. Cv, "Chastete vainc Cupido" ("Against Pallas
Cupid darted his lance, / But she opposed her shield, and
did so well / That she made a conquest of him, /
Completely stripped of arms, and power"), reproduced in
Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Shöne, eds., Emblemata
(Stuttgart, 1967), cols. 1733f.; and Rudolf Wittkower,
"Transformations of Minerva in Renaissance Imagery," in
Journal of the Warburg Institute, 2 (1938-39), pp.
194-205, citing examples of the Venus Victrix armed with a
shield bearing Minerva's Gorgoneion, along with evidence
for a type he refers to as a "Minerva Pudica."
      The arms of Britomart are likened to a "Gorgonian
shield" (FQ III.ix.22): she lays aside her armour "Like as
Minerua, being late returnd / From slaughter of the
Giaunts conquered;... /.../ Hath loosd her helmet from her
lofty hed, / And her Gorgonian shield gins vntye / From
her left arme, to rest in glorious victorye." The Lady in
Milton's Comus likewise invokes the Gorgonian shield of
chastity (ll. 447-452, as above), which reappears in
Milton as "Medusa with Gorgonian terror" guarding the ford
to relief in Milton's torrid and freezing hell-zones at
Paradise Lost II.611f. If Britomart is a Minerva, then
"Palladine," the other lady-knight in Book III (vii.52),
or the other patron of the cause of chastity, is a Pallas.
      For Britomart's conquest at the House of Busirane
there is a direct precedent in the second Petrarch's
Trionfi, that of Chastity over Amor. Petrarch?s figure
wears a white gown (cf. Britomart's bedclothes in FQ
III.i) and carries a shield that brought Medusa to her
death (III.xi.22).  In Politian's Stanze per la Giostra
II, 28-30, the lover Julio dreams about his beloved
Simonetta: "He seemed to see his lady, cruel, arrogant,
and obdurate in countenance, tie Cupid to the green trunk
of Minerva's happy tree; armed with the Gorgon shield over
her white gown, she protected her chaste breast, and
seemed to tear the feathers from his wings: and she broke
the bows and arrows of the wretch. // And Julio inside his
false sleep seemed to answer [Cupid?s request for help]
with confused mind: 'How may I do this, my sweet lord? For
she is enclosed in the armour of Pallas. You see my
spirits cannot endure the terrible face of Medusa, the
angry hiss of vipers, the face, the helmet, and the
flashing of lances.'"  See further Natale Conti, Mythol.
VI.v, "De Pallade," where the opposition of the virginal
Pallas to the voluptuous Venus is followed by remarks on
the Gorgon on Pallas' chest as implying the formidable
aspect of one who is wise, vigilant, and temperate in the
face of outlaws. (There is rather more to know about this
shield, if the aegis is also/originally the skin of
Athene's father Pallas [sic!], flayed after he tried to
rape her -- Tzetes on Lycophron 355, contra the more usual
Perseus story for the explanation as in Euripides, Ion
995.)
      The love-god Eros spares the virgin goddess Athene,
because he is afraid of her Medusan shield, according to
Lucian?s Dialogue of Aphrodite and Eros. It is Minerva
Pudica who triumphs in the "inward beauty" -- "that which
no eyes can see" -- of the bride in the Epithalamion: "But
if ye saw [...] Much more then would ye wonder [...] And
stand astonisht lyke to those which red / Medusaes mazeful
hed. / There dwels sweet loue and constant chastity, /
Vnspotted fayth and comely womanhood, / Regard of honour
and mild modesty" (ll. 185-93). The Medusa interpolation
at Roman de la Rose 20810-11 contrasts the life-giving
powers of the image of the female genitalia with those of
Medusa's fatal head: "This one changes [men] back from
stone, maintains their human shapes, better ones in fact
than they had before.... Medusa's image is harmful, this
profitable; that kills, this revives" (tr. Charles
Dahlberg, The Romance of the Rose [Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1971], 421). Thus "Medusaes mazeful
hed" can also be an image for "fresh flowring Maidenhead"
of Belphoebe in Book III (v.54-55), which has as its
parallel in Book IV the chastity-causing cestus borne in
an ark by Sir Satyrane, one of the Knights of Maidenhead.
 When he undertakes the prize's defense, Satyrane is armed
with a "maidenheaded shield" (IV.iv.17), but when he falls
into his struggle with the lustful beast rending the mount
of Florimell -- "that faire Mayd, the flowre of womens
pride" -- he "in his Scutcheon bore a Satyres hedd"
(III.vii.30-31).
     A complex of meanings for the Medusan image can also
be derived from the following: John Freccero, "Medusa: The
Letter and the Spirit," Yearbook of Italian Studies, 1972,
1-19, on Inferno X (the scene at hell-gate that depends on
Medusan passages in Ovid, Metam. IV, 452-56, and Virgil,
Aen. IV, 238-42, and VI, 570-74), Roman de la Rose as
above, and Dante, Rime Petrose (where the beloved is
identified with a stone or stonifying presence; see, e.g.,
no. 2, vs. 19, La sua bellezza ha più vertù che petra --
"her beauty has more virtue than a stone" [= gemstone]);
and Durling, Petrarch's Lyric Poems (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), Intro., pp. 29-33, with
Petrarch, Rime sparse: e.g., no. 366, vv. 111-17: "Medusa
and my error have made me a stone dripping vain moisture
[i.e., a weeping 'petra']. Virgin, fill my weary heart
with holy repentant tears; at least let my last weeping be
devout, and without earthly mud: as was my first vow,
before my insanity." I.e., the speaker asks Mary to undo
the petrification the unyielding, Medusan mistress caused
in him, or what, by her, he caused in himself.  Some of
this seems to be the fraught background for Spenser's
usage. -- Jim Nohrnberg

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